Scandal!: Katie Thurston Hates Doughnuts, Probably
The Food That Didn’t Get Eaten On The Bachelorette, week 5: When producers play god, it's the baked goods that pay the ultimate price
Welcome back to The Takeout's weird column about the food, or absence thereof, in the many corners of the Bachelor cinematic universe! I'm your host, Allison Shoemaker, and I, too, brought my telescope from home. In the fifth week of Katie Thurston's Journey To Find Love, things get a lot less surprising, to the extent that it feels a bit as though the producers are trolling everyone who has ever cried, "No, please, not another human bar cart!" But honestly, after the week where everyone ate all the food, all the time, and also occasionally rubbed pepper juice into their eyes, it's a bit of a relief to once again be taking screenshots of "meals" that the contestants "eat" while they talk about their "journeys" and getting "clarity." So let's not dilly-dally, or the producers will include footage of us just sitting here in silence, waiting for someone to be a butthole.
Undo at least four of your shirt buttons, and let's get into it.
Did The Bachelorette actually eat food this week—and if so, what?
On camera? No, she did not. (Maybe they ate the season's food budget last week.)
Okay, so what didn’t she eat?
Boring stuff. On boring dates.
Boring Blake date: a charcuterie board and, uh, a brown thing and some green stuff
So the paint-by-numbers nature of this week's episode all but guarantees that a) Blake will get a one-on-one date, during which he will b) get a rose, while c) all the other guys in the "house" stew over what that means for their relationships/camera-time. Blah blah, ride horses in the desert, blah blah, look longingly at cured meats and fine cheeses Blake, blah blah, A LITERAL ROLL IN THE HAY.
The dudes all talk about how Blake is Katie's "type" (is he?) and at one point Quartney asks flatly if the two of them knew each other before his arrival, which is when we learn that Blake, once again, slid into the DMs. Katie says that was it. About half of them look pretty suspicious. Anyway, zzzzzz, dinner.
What the hell? Computer, enhance:
Well, okay, the area on the left looks like rice pilaf, but I assume the entreé is a very large potato wedge fried in dirty oil, resting on a bed of balls of spinach. Blake gets the rose.
Boring group date: Hunter feasts upon the heart’s-blood of his enemies, especially that nice widower
Okay, so this is what I mean by suspect editing. All the promos for this episode were variations on "HUNTER IS A MADMAN, HE MURDERS SOMEONE IN THE PURSUIT OF LOVE." And it's clear that Hunter does enjoy yelling in tiny clothes while hurling his dense little body at other people, for love. But while Hunter may have gotten these other carb-starved testosterone and body-oil engines all revved up, he is not the one who knocks the wind out of good old "dad bod" Michael A. (A note to Michael A.: you look great, buddy!)
Anyway, sweet Justin with the GIF-face is actually the guy who hits Michael hard, but no permanent damage is done and Justin is both visibly upset by it and immediately apologizes to Michael, who looks rough but is very generous in his response to getting hurt in The Bachelorette's ritual bloodletting. The only good thing about this portion of date is what we see in the end-credits, when one of the Bachelor Nation regulars attempts to teach the men to leap like gazelles.
In the evening portion, Katie makes out with a lot of people, Michael A. tells the rest of the dudes about the loss of his wife, which makes sweet little sad puppy-face Greg actually weep. It is extremely endearing. Hunter gets the group date rose because he showed Katie pictures of his kids. Moving on.
Boring Andrew date: A huge plate of broccoli, some smeared cauliflower mash, and maybe a Landjäger
Andrew gets the second one-on-one of the week, and so he and Katie go wander around the woods in the dark opening envelopes. Later they have dinner, don't eat that stuff, and talk about interracial dating. Oh, and at one point while they're going on their very fancy opening envelopes date, they open one that asks them to describe their perfect day. Andrew's response is not unlike this one:
Anyway, Andrew's perfect day is... Sunday. Moving on.
Boring cocktail party and rose ceremony: Zilch
What do we see Katie eat in the last quarter of this same-length-as-always-yet-it-feels-much-longer episode? Nothing. What could she have eaten? Well, these doughnuts from poor Turtleneck Josh, one of several hot contestants whose names I only just learned, right as they depart.
Now, we don't see Katie say she hates doughnuts. It just kinda feels that way. If this footage was important to the story, they'd have included it, right?
Well, that's how this episode works, anyway. By the time all the dudes are sitting around, talking about how there's no drama at the rose ceremony this week and then just sitting in silence while the cameras roll, it becomes clear, to this writer at least, that this is The Bachelorette's way of reminding us that shitty interpersonal drama is actually this show's main course. When did this shit become interesting? When Hunter became delusionally confident with no sense of time, and told Turtleneck And Necklace James, who did not have a rose, to buzz off.
Yes, but there was good drama this episode! There was Michael A. making 'em weep! There was everyone being suspicious of Blake! There was Quartney wrapping himself up in toilet paper as a selling point! We don't need testosterone-fueled chest-pumping! Really!
Who most deserves a plate full of macaroni and cheese or a huge piece of cake or something?
Let's call it a tie between Turtleneck Justin and Andrew, the former because he wasted those doughnuts on a doughnut-hater, and the latter because he didn't use his "British" "accent" even once! See you next week.